The president of the European court of human rights has warned political leaders against using "emotion and exaggeration" to criticise the court's workings.

Sir Nicolas Bratza made his comments as he released figures detailing the court's rulings during 2011. The figures reveal that the court ruled against the UK on just eight occasions, compared with 159 violations found against Turkey, 121 against Russia and 105 against Ukraine.

Of the western European nations, Greece and Italy had the largest number of adverse rulings – 69 and 32 respectively.

The court's breakdown of its judgments cast some doubt on the prime minister's claim that serious cases risked "being stuck in the queue".

The human rights violations most frequently found by the court were in the length of proceedings (341), the right to liberty and security (241) and the right to a fair trial (211). The court found 70 instances in which the right to life had been improperly violated, 53 of them in Russia.

Russia also had the most rulings against it for inhumane or degrading treatment – 62 of 183 – and, with a total of 488, was the country with the most human rights violations in 2011.

In an annual press conference, Bratza warned that human rights should not be forgotten amid the eurozone's financial crisis.

"Human rights, the rule of law and justice seem to be slipping down the political agenda in the current economic climate," he said. "It is in times like these that we must remember that human rights are not a luxury and that the burden of their protection must be a shared one.

"We must continue to ensure that the court remains strong, independent and courageous in its defence of the European convention on human rights."

In an accompanying statement, the court said the 47 countries that make up the Council of Europe had collectively failed to remedy structural problems with the court's backlog of cases, which stands at 30,000.

In a possible rebuke to Cameron, however, the statement warned that criticism of the court should be evidence-based.

"It was also important that its [the court's] independence and authority should not be undermined and that criticism by governments, even where legitimate, should rely on reasoned argument rather than emotion and exaggeration," it said.

"Whatever your views on the decisions, deportation to places of torture, DNA retention and the rights of rape victims can hardly be described as 'small claims' to the people concerned," Shami Chakrabarti, the organisation's director, said.

"Trivialising rights and freedoms is a real mistake: more worthy of a Bullingdon spirit than a bulldog one."

The ECHR handed out judgment on 1,157 cases over the course of 2011, of which 19 related to the UK. Of these, the court found the UK had violated at least one human right on eight occasions.

Nine of the remaining cases were found not to have violated human rights law, while two were "friendly settlements".

It was found against for lack of effective investigation on five occasions, not to have offered a fair trial on three occasions, and to have failed its duty on prohibition of torture twice.

The majority of cases brought to the court are struck out as inadmissible without receiving a full hearing. In the UK's case, 97% of cases filed at the court between 1966 and 2010 were dismissed during this preliminary stage.